Hey, from CNN, I'm AfomaDK, with the five things you need to know for Monday, October 27th.

The evacuation order is not a suggestion. It is a directive and a directive to save your life.

That's Pernell Charles Jr. The Jamaican Minister of Labor and Social Security, with an urgent warning

about Hurricane Melissa, churning in the Caribbean and closing in on Jamaica. It's the strongest

storm of the planet this year as a rare category five, and one of the Atlantic's strongest

hurricanes on record. The storm's outer bands are lashing Jamaica with wind and rain. The powerful hurricane has already killed three people in Haiti and one person in the Dominican Republic.

Regardless of where it enters and where it exits, there is going to be massive flooding as a result of the surf.

That's Jamaica's transport minister, Daryl Vaz.

A senior meteorologist on the island told journalists

that residents in low-lying neighborhoods along Jamaica's coastline

will be the most impacted, and landslides are possible.

Officials say buses are being used to take people in need to emergency shelters.

Roughly 40 million people are at risk of losing federal aid as the government shutdown drags on for a fourth week.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it won't use its $6 billion contingency fund to cover the supplemental nutrition assistance program, or SNAP benefits next month if the stalemate

continues. That's according to the official USDA site. Here's CNN's Manu Raju.

There's a bipartisan bill that is being pushed right now simply to deal with those issues of

those expiring SNAP benefits. And then there's also a debate here about whether or not the

administration can

move money around and fund this program without an act of Congress. That's something the White

House does not seem keen to do, but it's something that some members on both sides of the aisle

says that it can do. That debate will continue to play out as the positions on both sides of the aisle

are only hardening amid all of this.

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